Removing teachers can be lengthy, expensive

Sunday

Jul 9, 2017 at 4:00 AM

By Bill Bush Columbus Dispatch

COLUMBUS -- Stanley Watkins didn't work out as a kindergarten teacher in Columbus City Schools, and that cost taxpayers plenty.

On the job only two months, Watkins was being accused by staff at Fairwood Alternative Elementary on the Near East Side of using inappropriate physical interventions with students, failing to plan lessons, restraining children after being ordered to stop and being negative and combative with staff.

"I should spank you," one instructional assistant accused Watkins of telling kindergartners in a written report. "You hit me, so I should hit you. Bad boy. Bad girl."

But most glaringly, he was falling asleep in class while in charge of very young special-needs children, staff reported. A school psychologist saw Watkins "appear to sleep" for 20 minutes with three multiple-disability students under his care. One co-worker photographed Watkins appearing to be asleep in his chair while he was supposed to be supervising young children.

"Mr. Watkins was instructed not to fall asleep in class," Fairwood Principal Dewayne Davis wrote in a personnel record.

So just eight weeks into his new teaching career in the fall of 2015, Columbus City Schools decided he needed to go.

"We removed him from working with students very immediately in the process," said district spokesman Scott Varner. "As soon as the issue is brought to our attention, we take immediate action."

But thanks to Ohio law, the district was embarking on a long, expensive journey. Watkins demanded a hearing under the state teacher tenure laws that would take 11 days stretching over two months.

During this time, Watkins was assigned to the "book warehouse" on Hudson Street near Interstate 71, where the district sends teachers while it goes through the tedious legal process of termination, documents obtained through an Ohio Public Records Act request show. He was one of 37 teachers reassigned out of the classroom because they were being investigated last school year.

He was paid $26,300 in "absence" pay for the 2015-16 school year, or three-quarters of his annual salary, records show. He got about another $1,000 last school year before the district stopped paying him, records show.

When district officials called him Downtown in December 2015 to answer to the allegations, they asked about the photo that appeared to show him asleep in class, a child near his feet.

"I admit that one time, while I was showing a movie, I closed my eyes," Watkins is quoted as saying in the notes. "I did not fall asleep, but was just resting my eyes."

But months later, Watkins' defense seemed to shift when he submitted subsequent medical tests that said he had sleep apnea. He claimed in an October 2016 letter to the district personnel department that he was therefore "disabled" under federal law and entitled to "reasonable accommodations" paid for by the district.

Those included "doze alert," an earpiece that sounds an alarm if his head dips from nodding off in class, flexible morning arrival times, an ergonomic chair, "frequent rest breaks" away from students to "close his eyes" and other accommodations.

Watkins started the discipline process with an attorney, Sue Salamido, but she eventually resigned and he represented himself during the 11 days of hearings, Salamido and district records said. Attempts to reach Watkins for comment through Salamido were not successful.

Last month, after all of his options were exhausted, the school board finally got to vote to fire him, and did so without debate. The process used "is mandated both contractually and, in many cases, legislatively," Varner said.

And it might start again if the state moves to revoke Watkins' educator license to keep him from moving to another district and teaching children elsewhere in Ohio. Watkins is entitled to another hearing about that from the state.

In 2016, the Department of Education received 11,537 investigatory "referrals," up from about 6,000 a decade earlier. It opened 1,361 licensure investigations, more than double that of a decade before.

The Dispatch reported last month that 64 Columbus City Schools administrators were implicated in data-rigging in a case dating back five years, state Auditor Dave Yost told the state Department of Education, and that 35 are still working for the district as administrators, most of them making six-figure salaries. The status of their licensure cases, if any are still ongoing, are unclear because the process is secret until the department officially accuses educators of wrongdoing.

The district decided to fire four of the principals implicated in data-rigging: Two eventually resigned, but two others -- former Linden-McKinley STEM Academy Principal Tiffany L. Chavers and Marion-Franklin High School Principal Pamela B. Diggs -- demanded hearings, running up large taxpayer bills.

Diggs case alone accounted for 14 days of testimony by 43 witnesses and more than 100 exhibits introduced into evidence. In it, she argued that she was following district orders, was bullied into falsifying data and was a scapegoat.

"Ms. Diggs argues that, 'I didn't do anything wrong, but if I did, I should be excused for the reasons above,' " the taxpayer-paid hearing officer wrote in his decision. "I have concluded that she did things that were dramatically wrong."

Chavers' hearing took 11 days, and included 31 witnesses and 191 exhibits. Then the school board fired both of them -- years and tens of thousands of dollars later.